From the sinking of the Lusitania to the demise of a Russian warship saddled with $130 billion in gold, these are the most fascinating sunken ships from around the world.
For a significant chunk of human history, the world’s leading powers concerned themselves with dominating the seas. As the saying went, “he who ruled the seas, ruled the world.”
Naturally, this led to countless conflicts among nations across the centuries, and more than a few ships being laid to rest in watery graves.
Some of these sunken ships have since been recovered — while others remain on the ocean floor. Explore the most astonishing and eerie ones here.
The USS Arizona
Wikimedia CommonsThe attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Dec. 7, 1941, is commonly described as “a day that will live in infamy.” It was the day that Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor and resulted in the deaths of 2,402 people, multiple shipwrecks, and marked America’s entry into World War II.
Over 300 Japanese planes bombed the area, partly damaging or fully destroying eight U.S. Navy ships, three cruisers, an anti-aircraft training ship, a minelayer, and 188 U.S. aircrafts. Numerous power stations, as well as fuel and torpedo storage facilities, also suffered partial or complete damage.
Wikimedia CommonsAmerican sailors stand amid wrecked planes at the Ford Island seaplane base, watching as the USS Shaw explodes in the center background.
According to History, almost immediately, the Navy began efforts to salvage the U.S. fleet rapidly sinking into the ocean. Fortunately, the Navy’s flagship, the USS Pennsylvania, had been safely secured in a dry dock that very day — and thus sustained only minor damage.
The USS Tennessee, Maryland, West Virginia and Oklahoma, were also all sheltered from the aerial assault.
Recovery work on Pearl Harbor was so efficient that it took only three months for the Pennsylvania, Maryland, Tennessee, as well as cruisers Honolulu, Helena, and Raleigh to return to active service.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesSome of the U.S. Navy ships damaged during the Pearl Harbor attack.
But not all vessels resumed their function.
Salvaging the USS Nevada was one of the greatest triumphs the Salvage Division accomplished. It took 400 dives to retrieve parts, 1,500 man-hours, and two men losing their lives for the ship to resume duty. The three other heavily damaged vessels — Oklahoma, Arizona, and Utah — remain in the ocean to this day.
Today, a memorial stands at the site of the most famous sunken ship – the USS Arizona – where visitors can view the wreckage from a building designed with a glass floor.
The HMHS Britannic
Wikimedia CommonsHis Majesty’s Hospital Ship, the Britannic, at sea during World War I in 1917.
While the Titanic is a world-renowned shipwreck, the disaster of its younger sister ship has been largely forgotten. The HMHS Britannic was actually built by the same company as the Titanic – the White Star Line — and constructed after the “unsinkable” ship met its unexpected end.
Naturally, some changes had to be made in order to make the Britannic regain the trust of customers, so the company added a few extra lifeboats and a reinforced hull around the boiler and engine rooms as well as to other regions vulnerable to icebergs.
Unfortunately, the admirable attempt ultimately proved futile.
Wikimedia CommonsA funnel being transported to the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast during the ship’s assembly.
When it was finished, the Britannic was even larger than the Titanic and could have made for an excellent cruise ship, were it not for one fairly important issue: World War I had just begun. The Britannic was consequently requisitioned by the government for use as a hospital ship.
The Britannic lasted for a year before it was sunk by a German mine. Luckily, most of its passengers made it out of the wreck alive. Of the 1,000 people on board, only 30 or so died.
Wikimedia CommonsThe Britannic rests in the channel between Kea (left) and Makronisos (right).
Jacques Cousteau discovered the sunken ship in 1976, 400 feet below the surface of the Aegean Sea. He was rather surprised to find it in such remarkable condition, resting on its side.
Across the 1990s and 2000s, multiple expeditions have descended upon the sunken ship. The latest one occurred in 2012 when divers installed equipment to monitor bacteria growth on the ship in order to compare it to the Titanic.
The Sinking Of The RMS Lusitania
Wikimedia CommonsThe Lusitania arrives at a port between 1907 and 1913, possibly in New York.
The British ship, RMS Lusitania, shared a similar fate with the Britannic. It predated Britannic by a few years and was very briefly the largest ship in the world before it was overshadowed by its sister ship, the Mauretania.
Lusitania met its end when a German U-boat torpedoed it during World War I in 1915. The Germans claimed that the boat, which was carrying passengers, was actually aiding Britain in the war. The Brits, in turn, accused the Germans of breaching international law by destroying a non-military vessel carrying civilian passengers.
TwitterThe Lusitania was indeed carrying weapons of war.
But unknown to ticket-holders aboard the Lusitania, there were indeed 173 tons of weaponry bound for the war in the ship’s hull. Britain had actually violated an international law of wartime by allowing passengers aboard a ship that was transporting weapons for battle.
The Brits had clearly hoped the Germans wouldn’t attack the Lusitania if they disguised it as a routine cruiseliner. As a result of this assumption, however, 1,196 passengers died. There were 736 survivors.
Wikimedia CommonsThe pilot used this telegraph to communicate with engineers in the ship’s engine room and to determine the ship’s speed.
Nowadays, the sunken ship can be found near the lighthouse at Kinsale, Ireland, lying on its starboard side. Unlike other wrecks of its time, the Lusitania has not aged very gracefully. Experts estimate that at this rate it won’t be long until the ship becomes so decrepit that it collapses on itself entirely.
The Sunken Pirate Ship: The Whydah Gally
Wikimedia CommonsA model of the Whydah Gally and its presumed design, based on records and witness accounts.
The Whydah Gally was originally built as a passenger, cargo, and slave ship, but instead became a bonafide pirate ship when it was captured by notorious pirate Captain Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy off the coast of Jamaica during the Golden Age of Piracy.
Bellamy commandeered a minimum of 53 ships in a little over a year. He was the wealthiest pirate of his kind in history and unfortunately, died at the young age of 28. Bellamy was aboard the Whydah Gally when it was hit by a storm on April 26, 1717, and sank, taking its captain with it.
Nine survivors of the shipwreck were captured and tried in Boston for piracy and they were ultimately sentenced to death by hanging.
Wikimedia CommonsThe Whydah Gally’s bell was retrieved in 1985 and confirmed to be Bellamy’s due to its inscription: “THE WHYDAH GALLY 1716.”
But it wasn’t just Bellamy and 143 crew members that sank to the depths of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, in Cape Cod that night in 1717. The Whydah Gally was also carrying a plethora of gold and silver.
Wikimedia CommonsActual pirate treasure in the form of silver coins, recovered from the wreckage in 1985.
The Whydah Gally was rediscovered 260 years later by the use of an old map that had documented where the boat sank. It was common for local Cape Codders to plunder sunken ships for treasure and so extensive maps of their destruction were created throughout the 18th century. Modern divers found a bell within the wreckage in 1985 inscribed with “The Whydah Gally 1716,” proving that the sunken ship once belonged to Bellamy.
The Whydah Gally is thus largely believed to be the first pirate ship ever positively identified.
Since its rediscovery, over 200,000 individual pieces have been recovered from the sunken ship, including gold and silver coins.
Queen Anne’s Revenge
ABC News AUA recovered cannon from Queen Anne’s Revenge, retrieved in 2013 near Beaufort, North Carolina.
Even though it only terrorized the seas for a brief period, Queen Anne’s Revenge made its mark on history as one of the most fearsome ships on the high seas. This was the result of none other than the ship’s Captain, Edward “Blackbeard” Teach.
Blackbeard commanded the ship for one fearsome year between 1717 and 1718 before running it aground — which some say was done intentionally.
Originally a French slaving vessel, Queen Anne’s Revenge was captured and modified by Blackbeard to hold a whopping 40 cannons.
The ambitious criminal renamed the ship from La Concorde to Queen Anne’s Revenge in honor of the Queen of England and Scotland. Like many other pirates, Blackbeard hoped the throne of Great Britain would return from the House of Hanover in England to the House of Stuart in Scotland.
In June 1718, the ship hit a sandbar off North Carolina. Blackbeard and his men abandoned it and made off with the loot stored aboard. Then, the captain was killed in a battle with pirate hunters on Nov. 22, 1718.
The fate of Queen Anne’s Revenge, meanwhile, remained a mystery until 1996 when a wreck believed to be that of the infamous ship was found off North Carolina’s coast. Though thousands of artifacts were recovered from the sunken ship, none of them provided definitive evidence of its identity until 2011 when it was confirmed to be Blackbeard’s long-lost vessel.
FacebookThe ship had at least three anchors. This one weighed a whopping 1,965 pounds.
From countless relics such as cannons, weapons, medical gear, and a giant anchor, the wreckage site yielded invaluable artifacts. Many of them are now on display at North Carolina’s Maritime museum — and its opening attracted record crowds.
The HMS Terror And The Lost Franklin Expedition
Wikimedia CommonsThe Terror was initially built as a bomb vessel and even participated in several skirmishes in the War of 1812 before Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition.
The HMS Terror and her sister ship Erebus set sail from Greenhithe, England, on May 19, 1845, with a crew of 134 men.
Headed by captain John Franklin, the so-called Franklin Expedition set out to discover the elusive Northwest Passage which would be a direct path to Asia and a lucrative trade route.
The expedition was comprised of 24 officers and 110 men and carried three years’ worth of food in its bowels. Unfortunately, much of it had been improperly tinned, which would naturally spell severe trouble for those aboard.
The HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were last spotted near Baffin Bay off the west coast of Greenland in July 1845, and weren’t seen again until at the bottom of the Arctic over a century later.
The first remains of the expedition were found five years after its disappearance when some of the frozen bodies of the crew were discovered buried in graves dated 1846 on an uninhabited speck of land named Beechey Island. But it took until 1980 for those graves to be rediscovered and exhumed for analysis by Owen Beattie of the University of Alberta. His team found that the bodies contained clear signs of lead poisoning from improperly tinned food.
The sunken shipwrecks of Terror and Erebus themselves were not discovered until 2014 and 2016, respectively, when Parks Canada announced a $75,000, six-week search for them in order to bolster the country’s claim over the resource-heavy arctic.
Seriously Creepy Stuff/YouTubeBody of John Torrington, crew member on the Franklin Expedition, found perfectly preserved in the Arctic ice in 1984.
The Erebus was found at the bottom of the eastern portion of Queen Maud Gulf, west of O’Reilly Island, and the Terror was discovered by the Arctic Research Foundation. The latter was extremely well-preserved. Using submersible drones, audiences around the world were able to view the long-lost vessel in all its glory for the first time in history.
Oddly, there were no obvious signs of damage to either of the ships that may have suggested they were sunk and the crew forced to abandon them. Instead, researchers now believed that the poor sailors were forced to abandon the ships after they became lodged in the ice, and died or resorted to cannibalism in their attempt to trek overland to a nearby outpost for help.
How The Seaworthy Batavia Became A Sunken Ship
It was June 4, 1629, when the Dutch East India Company flagship, Batavia, shipwrecked some 30 miles off Australia’s coast on Morning Reef near Beacon Island.
According to the Australian National Maritime Museum, the ship was destined for the colonies on modern-day Jakarta, Indonesia, carrying with it sailors and private travelers alike, including women and children.
Treacherous storms caused the Batavia to separate from the rest of its fleet, forcing it to cross the Indian Ocean alone. Hundreds of sailors were left to fend for themselves after running aground on the desolate Houtman Abrolhos islands.
Tensions between Commander Francisco Pelsaert and skipper Ariaen Jacobsz had already grown over the voyage, but only worsened on land, and deputy Jeronimus Cornelisz then conspired with Jacobsz to mutiny against Pelsaert.
WA MuseumAn illustration of the brutal massacre that followed the Batavia‘s crash.
Pelsaert, meanwhile, decided to take the ship’s longboat and risk his life to travel 1,800 miles to Batavia to find help. Cornelisz used Pelsaert’s absence to form his own kingdom. With no freshwater or food, everyone relied on the new dictator and his loyal men for survival. Unfortunately, Cornelisz confiscated all remaining rations, weapons, and rafts — and slaughtered most of the surviving crew.
Pelsaert miraculously arrived at Batavia 33 days later and arranged to have Jacbosz arrested for negligence. But when he returned to the island 63 days later, he found that Cornelisz had been the real threat all along.
Pelsaert returned to find nearly 125 men, women, and children of the voyage murdered.
WA MuseumThe Batavia is depicted here in Jan Janz 1647 edition of Ongeluckige Voyagie as it approached the Abrolhos islands.
The women had been raped and murdered and everyone else was either drowned in the ocean or had their throat cut at night. As punishment, Cornelisz had his hands cut off and was hanged for his crimes. The island is now fittingly known as Traitor’s Island.
The Batavia, meanwhile, was discovered in 1963 and helped to establish many of Australia’s heritage laws. It can now be seen on display at the Western Australian Museum in Fremantle.
The Sinking Of The Dmitrii Donskoi
US NavyThe Russian warship, Dmitrii Donskoi, at New York Harbor in 1893.
Finding a Russian warship thousands of feet below sea level is remarkable enough, but discovering 200 tons of gold worth an estimated $130 billion in its hull is another matter entirely.
But this is exactly what an international team of experts said they’d found in a sunken ship off the coast of a South Korean island in July 2018, where the remains of the Dmitrii Donskoi were untouched and waiting.
According to The Telegraph, the vessel sunk in 1905 during the Battle of Tsushima, which was the final defeat of the Russian Navy in the Russo-Japanese War.
It’s believed that the captain intentionally hastened the sinking of the warship after it was fatally hit so that the Japanese wouldn’t get their hands on its rumored treasure.
Shinil GroupDivers identified the ship by its name inscribed in Cyrillic characters on the stern.
The Donskoi was initially designed as a commerce raider. When war erupted, however, it was deployed as a protector of transport ships in the Far East. The day it sank, 60 of the total 591 crew members were killed and 120 were injured. The captain allegedly anchored the ship and ordered his men to abandon it before he intentionally sank it the next morning.
Shinil GroupPhotos of the Dmitrii Donskoi’s wreckage.
Footage of the vessel was captured 113 years later by the South Korean maritime salvage company, the Shinil Group, and its submersibles. The footage clearly showed the ship’s cannons, deck guns, anchor, and wheel encrusted in over a century of marine growth — but no treasure.
Though the Shinil Group said it planned to give Russia half of any of the gold it managed to recover, it wound up getting up caught in a scam. According to the BBC, the ship apparently had no such gold aboard and South Korean police found several members guilty of fraud for falsely claiming they had found it in the first place.
The Donskoi, meanwhile, remains in the ocean.
The Sunken Ship In The Black Sea
AFP PHOTO/Black Sea MAP/EEF ExpeditionsEnhanced 3D imaging of the remains of the 2,400-year-old sunken ship at the bottom of the Black Sea.
When the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project surveyed the floor of the Black Sea to analyze prehistoric sea-level changes, they never thought they’d find what is largely believed to be the oldest intact shipwreck in the world.
According to The Guardian, the 75-foot sunken ship remained entirely untouched 1.2 miles below the surface for over 2,400 years. Fortunately, the Black Sea’s oxygen-free water kept both air and animals away from the ship, effectively preserving it across millennia.
For professor Jon Adams, who served as the principal investigator to the project, the 2018 find was unprecedented. “This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world,” he said.
Adams and his team posit that this sunken ship was an Ancient Greek merchant vessel. Until 2018, this kind of ship was only seen “on the side of Ancient Greek pottery.”
Werner Forman/UIG via Getty ImagesThe “Siren Vase” at the British Museum dates back to 480 B.C., and depicts Homer’s character Odysseus embattled against sirens luring sailors into the depths.
Experts removed a small piece of the ship to carbon-date it, but have left the sunken ship in its final resting place where it remains undisturbed to this day.
SS Cotopaxi
Science ChannelMarine biologist and underwater archaeologist Michael Barnette inspects the Cotopaxi to confirm its measurements.
The Bermuda Triangle has confounded generations of sailors and conspirators as countless planes and ships have gone missing in its mysterious stretch between Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Miami. And according to Fox News, the merchant ship SS Cotopaxi was no different, having disappeared in 1925.
Departing Charleston, South Carolina for Havana, Cuba on Nov. 29, 1925, the vessel was never seen intact again. The 32 people aboard vanished just as ominously. While the corpses have certainly naturally composed since then, the ship’s remains were oddly missing — until January 2020.
Discovered 35 nautical miles off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida, the process of discovery was anything but simple — and has since been chronicled by the Science Channel.
FacebookThe SS Cotopaxi’s disappearance is so famous that the ship appeared in the Gobi Desert in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, presumably transported there by extraterrestrials.
Marine biologist and underwater explorer Michael Barnette’s contacted British Historian Guy Walters to help him find the sunken ship.
“Walters combed through ship records at the archives of Lloyd’s of London, who were the insurance brokers for the SS Cotopaxi,” a Science Channel statement explained. “There he discovered something previously unknown about the Cotopaxi’s voyage.”
“The ship had sent out wireless distress signals with a position on Dec. 1, 1925, two days after it left Charleston.”
Science ChannelBarnette contacted British historian Guy Walters to gather more information on the ship’s location and status before disappearing.
Oddly enough, the two researchers found that it had already been discovered 35 years ago. Experts had merely mistaken it for another missing ship. Thus, what had previously been known as the Bear Wreck was actually the seemingly long-lost SS Cotopaxi.
After diver Al Perkins descended into the ocean to film and photograph the vessel, the grandson of Cotopaxi’s captain, William J. Meyers, confirmed that it was indeed his grandfather’s ship. The reason for its sinking, however, remains a mystery.
Only in 2019 did new research posit that a “rogue wave” was to blame for the ship’s sinking, but that truth lies with the Cotopaxi, concealed beneath the waves.
Enjoyed these sunken ships? Then, learn about the creepiest ghost ships ever found. Next up, read about the woman who survived the sinking of the Titanic and its two sister ships.
